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Best Books from Indie Presses
19
items Compared to the Big Five publishing houses, indie presses take more chances on debut authors, support marginalized authors at higher rates, and welcome stories that are experimental and less likely to be commercially successful. Supporting indie pres...
Sections
13
C&R Press (Chattanooga, TN)
First Matter Press (Portland, OR)
Feminist Press (New York, NY)
Graywolf Press (Minneapolis, MN)
Grove Atlantic (New York, NY)
Heyday Books (Berkeley, CA)
C&R Press (Chattanooga, TN)
A humorous novel about a Chinese American comedian who defies the expectations of what an Asian is "supposed" to act like.
No Good Very Bad Asian
First Matter Press (Portland, OR)
First Matter Press is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization and their authors maintain 100% copyrights and sales royalties of their published work.
Poetry collection from an Oregon Book Award winner.
ten-cent flower & other territories
Feminist Press (New York, NY)
Nonprofit publisher of the City University of New York. Founded in 1970.
A bizarre collection of short stories.
Slug and Other Stories
Graywolf Press (Minneapolis, MN)
Dual timelines that eventually converge to tell a heavy story of a father and son experiencing homelessness, and the circumstances that brought them there.
Abundance: A Novel by Jakob Guanzon, Paperback
There is little to say that hasn’t already been captured about this haunting and beautiful short story collection. The book can be summed up as science fiction/fantasy, yet its experimental forms and straddling of the lines between realism and fantas...
Her Body and Other Parties: Stories
Collection of short stories from a finalist for the National Book Award. Each story centers Black boys or men in the Bronx or Brooklyn.
Brinkley does not shy away from the negative aspects of masculinity: men believing they are owed something from w...
A Lucky Man: Stories
Experimental novella from the perspective of a teenage girl reflecting on a summer in which another girl drowned.
Machine by Susan Steinberg, Paperback
Grove Atlantic (New York, NY)
Winner of the Aspen Words Literary Prize. About a woman to returns to her family’s Palestinian homeland and befriends a group of actors.
Enter Ghost
Bizarre, funny, disturbing, thought-provoking. This short story collection was first published in Japan.
Life Ceremony: Stories
Heyday Books (Berkeley, CA)
From back copy: Deborah A. Miranda tells stories of her Ohlone/Costanoan-Esselen family and the experiences of California Indians more widely through oral histories, newspaper clippings, anthropological recordings, personal reflections, and poems.
Bad Indians (Expanded Edition): A Tribal Memoir
McSweeney’s (San Francisco, CA)
A long debut novel in which the narrator goes on a wacky odyssey to find the perfect apartment.
Pay As You Go by Eskor David Johnson, Paperback
Milkweed Editions (Minneapolis, MN)
One woman’s reckoning with the question of having kids while on a scientific expedition to Antarctica. She includes a lot of conversations she has with crew members and scientists aboard the ship.
The Quickening: Creation and Community at the Ends of the Earth
An indigenous botanist shares how to become more conscious of the natural world around us.
Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the ...
Perfect Day Publishing (Portland, OR)
This book is so indie that I couldn’t even find an affiliate link for it. But even if I’m not getting paid for this message, I want to share it. This personal essay collection is that good. But let me know in the comments if you do buy it, just becau...
Staring Contest: Essays about Eyes by Joshua James Amberson
Red Hen Press (Pasadena, CA)
A memoir about navigating disability from Ehlers-Danlos syndrome
Floppy: Tales of a Genetic Freak of Nature at the End of the World
Sarabande Books (Louisville, KY)
Each essay addresses sexuality and masculinity in some way, from trying on a dress at his grandmother’s house as a child to reflecting on the history of the slur “faggot.” While touchingly tragic at times, Van Meter addresses the content with a compe...
If You Knew Then What I Know Now
Tin House (Portland, OR)
Called a short story collection, but they all center on one character living on a reservation in Maine. They’re chronologically out of order, structured in a way that makes his predicaments all the more heart-wrenching when he doesn’t know info that ...
Night of the Living Rez
Insanely delightful, especially when considering the book starts out with a tragic death. Debut novel from Hartnett, who’s gone on to write ‘Unlikely Animals’ and ‘The Road to Tender Hearts.’
Rabbit Cake
Wave Books (Seattle, WA)
Legendary work of prose poetry meditating on the color blue, attaching a blue-colored lens to explorations of love, loneliness, art, and philosophy.
Bluets